The Baby
This 1973 bizarro thriller is as disgusting (and compelling) as a car wreck.
Reviewed by Jerry Renshaw, Fri., March 30, 2001
The Baby
D: Ted Post (1973); with Anjanette Comer, Ruth Roman, Marianna Hill, Susanne Zenor.
Man, this is just one helluva weird movie. It's hard to even know where to start discussing The Baby, one of the more obscure pieces of Seventies film flotsam to come down the line. I suppose that one definition of a horror movie is a film that makes the viewer ill at ease, and in that respect, The Baby certainly triumphs. A social worker (Comer) is called in to investigate a family for eligibility for aid. The family (a widow and two adult daughters) has a baby under their roof; the odd thing is, the baby appears to be 23 or so and still residing in a playpen. The social worker soon has a little too much of herself invested in the case, and events begin to take on a momentum of their own. The mother (Roman) doesn't appreciate the woman's snooping and soon goes from standoffish to downright hostile. The movie's climax comes from somewhere far, far in left field; it's a real jaw-dropper for even the most jaded horror fan. In some weird sense, it all falls together like a grotesque Southern California Gothic -- morbid, perverse, and fascinating. Ruth Roman gives a gale-force performance as the blowsy, cigarette-puffing mom of the twisted little nuclear family, and her two daughters are close behind, with poor Baby (who has no other name) crawling, bawling, and dirtying his diapers. The scene in which the three sneak up and find a teen babysitter breast-feeding Baby (no kidding) then beat the stuffing out of her with a belt is enough to scare the bejesus out of anyone. The girl wasn't asked to babysit again, incidentally. TV director Ted Post gives the film a bland, suburban movie-of-the-week look, which, along with its sunny California climes, somehow makes it even more unnerving. Some may find The Baby offensive, some may even get a nervous chuckle from it, but there's no question that it's a bizarre, uncomfortable movie that's highly recommended for cult-movie aficionados and fans of the depraved. It's as disgusting (and compelling) as a car wreck.